Email Education

To help manage millions of emails, Hargray has an inactive email account policy. Email accounts that have not been logged into within the past 90 days are considered inactive. These accounts are put into a pending deactivation status for 30 days, after which the email account is deactivated and all email, content, and features associated with the email account are permanently deleted.

The account simply needs to be logged at least once in a 90-day period to remain in active status.

Log in with the username in question, and the email account will be removed from pending deactivation.

Hargray will send a “pending deactivation” email notice to your email address informing you of the account status and scheduled deactivation.

No. Once an account has been deleted, the emails, files, and all content associated with the email address are deleted and unrecoverable.

Emails will still be available in your inbox until the account is deactivated and closed.

Emails sent to a deactivated email address cannot be delivered. The sender will receive an "undeliverable" message.

No, email forwarding does not stop your account from deactivation status.  You must log in with username in question at least once in a 90-day period to remain in active status.

• Go to www.hargray.com; select “Check email.”
• Enter your username and password.
• Once logged into your inbox, click on “Compose.”
• Enter an email address in the field labeled “Add.”
• After entering the address, click on the button labeled “Add.” The email address entered will be viewable and ready for selection for future correspondences in the above box.

The difference is much the same as between your name and address. The username tells who you are; the email address tells who and where you are. A username is your unique identifier for a domain: who you are. An email address is username@domain: who and where you are. Let’s say your username is johndoe. That is the name by which our servers recognize you. All that’s needed is the username (and the password to confirm that it is indeed you), because you are directly connected to your ISP’s server. Usernames are unique to a domain. There will only be one johndoe registered with your ISP. If your username is johndoe, your email address will be, for example, [email protected]. Email requires both a recipient and a location. When people send you email, their mail servers look at the domain (hargray.com in this case) and send the email to the hargray.com mail server. From there, our mail server puts it in your mailbox because it has your username on it.

Web mail accounts are email accounts you can access over the Internet through your Web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer). Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail are examples of free Web-based email accounts. POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) email accounts are accessible through email applications such as Outlook. POP3 may be more convenient for your home computer, but Web-based email is convenient for when you are using other computers, such as at work, at school, or when traveling.

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Bounced email is electronic mail that is returned to the sender because it cannot be delivered for some reason. There are several reasons an email message can be bounced back to the sender. Reading the details on the returned message can help a sender understand why a particular email was undeliverable. Some reasons for a bounced email include: the recipient’s address is invalid (misspelled or mistyped); the address is recognized by the recipient’s mail server but is returned to the sender because the recipient’s mailbox is full; the mail server is temporarily unavailable; or the recipient no longer has an email account at that address.

The email protocol was created for the sending of simple text messages. File attachments can occasionally cause problems, as mail servers still treat email as correspondence that can be sent back and forth very quickly. If someone has sent you a large file, you may not be able to download it due to the connection timing out.

If this happens, you can go to webmail. Simply read the large message and delete it. You will then be able to download the rest of your emails normally.

Hargray.com webmail is at webmail.hargray.com.

When deleting a message in webmail, you will need to select the email via checking the box next to it, choosing the delete option, then choosing the purge deleted option.

Spammers get email addresses in several ways. If your email address appears on a newsgroup or website, it can be harvested from there. Also, a lot of “give us your email address for a free subscription” requests result in your address being sold to a spammer. Spammers will also send emails to random usernames @hargray.com or any other ISP’s domain, knowing that some of them will be valid. For that reason, it’s important not to reply to spam, as that confirms your address is valid.

(Note: Remember — NEVER send a reply with a remove request to a spammer. This only confirms that your address is valid, and you’ll probably receive more spam.)

Helping to prevent spam and viruses from spreading through email, Hargray’s spam filter also offers customers the ability to manage their mailbox settings. Review your blocked spam here.

If you received an email with the subject “Viagra for free jocjvbsgds,” you would immediately recognize it as spam and delete it. Hargray’s spam filter may not. Some email that is obviously spam will slip through the filter because we do not want to block legitimate emails. What is obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to a computer, which cannot think. The spam filter has to work by following simple instructions. These instructions are combined to give the filter a high probability of identifying spam. There are two types of errors that can be made in this process. The filter can fail to identify spam, or it can identify a legitimate email as a spam. The two types of errors are related. As the chance of one increases, the chance of the other decreases. If the filter is so aggressive that it blocks every spam, it will also block a great deal of legitimate email. The primary focus of Hargray’s filtering system is not blocking legitimate emails.

People are trying to sell you things. Email is cheap to send. Spam mailing lists are created in a variety of ways, including scanning Usenet discussion groups, buying or stealing Internet mailing lists, searching the Web for addresses, and even just guessing email addresses at random. If you use email, chances are, you’re going to get spam.

This is called “email spoofing.” This can be done by a virus finding an email address on the Internet and then using that address to look like it’s coming from that person. Or it can be done maliciously by anyone. In most cases, it is untraceable or nearly impossible to find out who is doing it.

Email spoofing is the forgery of an email header (or email address) so that the message appears to have originated from someone or somewhere other than the actual source. Distributors of spam often use spoofing in an attempt to get recipients to open, and possibly even respond to, their solicitations.

Email spoofing is possible because Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), the main protocol used in sending email, does not include an authentication mechanism. To send spoofed email, senders insert commands in headers that will alter message information. It is possible to send a message that appears to be from anyone, anywhere, saying whatever the sender wants it to say. Thus, someone could send spoofed email that appears to be from you with a message that you didn’t write.

Although most spoofed email falls into the “nuisance” category and requires little action other than deletion, the more malicious varieties can cause serious problems and security risks. For example, spoofed email may purport to be from someone in a position of authority, asking for sensitive data such as passwords, credit card numbers, or other personal information — any of which can be used for a variety of criminal purposes.

The best thing to do if you receive an email that claims to be from a reputable company requesting sensitive information is to call that company and verify that it is requesting the information.

Some steps you can take to reduce or eliminate “spoofing”:

• Install an antivirus application. If you already have one installed, make sure it is up to date.
• Scan your computer for viruses.

If your computer is free from viruses:

• Change your email address. Changing your email address will eliminate not only email “spoofing” but spam as well. Be cautious about using your email address online. Many forums on the Internet are where spoofers and spammers get their email address lists.
• Delete them as you get them.

Relay error messages in response to email you don’t recall sending usually indicate that someone else who has your email address in their address book is infected by an email virus. When email viruses send out infected messages, they attempt to hide their origin by falsely listing an address taken from the infected computer’s address book as the sender. When the messages are rejected by the recipient server, the server attempts to contact the sender to warn of the virus problem, and because of the falsified address, the warning comes to you instead. Unfortunately, this makes it very difficult to identify the infected party and alert them about the problem. Our advice is to delete these warning messages, and when the user of the infected computer realizes the situation and deals with it, the messages will stop. Please keep in mind that even though these virus warnings are not a reliable indicator that your computer is infected, you do need to be aware of the risk of infection and take precautions. Any computer that connects to the Internet should have a virus scanner installed, and the scanner should be updated regularly.